Slither
by Koneko Cain
Summary: Seto and Yami Bakura find themselves trapped underground after an earthquake.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to any of these characters, I promise to give them back at the end relatively intact.

Warnings: Language, a little gore, slight cruelty to Yami...

Notes: Song on beginning Bloodhound Gang, I hope you die. The title doesn't make much sense, other than the video for the song Slither by Velvet Revolver is set underground. Plus it's a good song and it's much better than the title I had before: Trapped With You – version 2.

This is a re-done version of one of my old, awful fics. I changed it completely, pairing and everything. It's for Sandman Bubblefish, for your wonderful emails that actually make me _want_ to go into my inbox instead of avoiding it like the plague. Thank you for giving me something I enjoy reading, and I hope I've returned the favour!

Slither

"I hope you flip some guy the bird, he cuts you off and you're forced to swerve, in front of a -" Bakura mumbled, only half paying attention to the music playing on his huge stereo headphones. He was hanging around the mall at night, telling himself he was scoping the place out for a little larceny but actually just getting out of the house because Marik and Ryou were watching a movie and being coupley. Since the sight of the unholy psychopath Marik – born of darkness itself – _cuddling_ actually made him feel physically sick, he'd opted to haunt Domino city's nice shiny mall instead.

"I hope this helps to emphasize, I hope you die..." The thief muttered, glancing into the windows of each of the shops he passed as he approached the center of the mall, which was a large dome with a fountain, a food court and a few benches. Most of the shops were closed since it was past nine, and the security guards would be herding the last few stragglers out to lock the place up in an hour or so. Still, it was somewhere to be until then.

He had to admit to being slightly jealous of Ryou, but not enough to actively go and do something about it. Besides, most of their friends – and other people from their little gang that Bakura didn't exactly consider to be friends – were already attached and dating people outside their circle wasn't really an option. It was hard to explain to a regular mortal all the screwed up pasts of himself and his friends without getting a few very weird looks. Pretending to be mortal just didn't work for him either. He had a mortal body, but he also had the skills of a five thousand year old tomb robber and the ability to summon various creepy critters from the mysterious depths of the shadow realm. Not that he did that much anyway, giving them substance took a lot of energy and they were pretty much only good for eating people he didn't like.

Reaching the end of the long row of shops he'd been wandering aimlessly down, Bakura reached the center of the mall and paused, taking in the sight of two people he happened to know standing beside the fountain. Seto Kaiba and Yami were having some kind of argument it seemed, and Bakura grinned wickedly, flipping his headphones down to hang around his neck so he could hear what was going on. He tended to like anything that involved bad things happening to the pharaoh, and an argument with his rich boyfriend definitely counted.

"Why can't you stop being such an arrogant-" The pharaoh was ranting, looking like he wanted to throw something.

"This coming from you?" Seto replied coldly, and Bakura snickered, hiding from view on the other side of the fountain.

"All I'm asking is for you to just stop acting like that towards my friends!" Yami yelled, and Bakura wished there were more people around so they could be causing a scene.

"That's not what you're asking. You want me to be part of your little gang, and draw smiley faces on my hand in permanent marker, get ink poisoning and become one of your cheerleaders. I'm having a relationship with you, not your entire fanclub." Seto said, his voice still perfectly level. Bakura wondered if that meant he was really angry, or if it meant he'd heard this same argument so many times he was just sick of saying it over again.

"How are we supposed to be together when you won't even let them come near your house? It's not as though they're going to wreck the place!" Yami demanded, making Bakura roll his eyes. He'd seen what those brats could do to a house, and he could only imagine what they'd manage to break given free reign in a mansion filled with whatever computer whatsits Kaiba had laying around all over the place. At least, that's what he imagined the Kaiba mansion might be like – he'd never actually been inside.

"I hate your friends, Yami. If you can't handle that it's time you found someone else, I'm not having this argument again." Seto growled, finally showing some emotion.

"Fine! I will find someone else! My friends mean too much to me to-" Yami began, and Bakura stepped out casually, stalking around the fountain to where the lovers' quarrel was taking place.

"Your friends are arseholes. Why don't you screech a bit louder, maybe the dead will rise." The thief said, then turned around and calmly wandered over to the closed food court window, wondering if it was worth breaking into. He could always wait until he got home, but he was getting hungry and picking the lock on the metal shutter wouldn't be too difficult as long as he could find a bit of wire somewhere...

"What the hell are_ you_ doing here, _thief_?" Yami spat, marching over to where Bakura was stripping the wire from one of the plastic leaves that adorned the equally plastic pot-plants dotted around the place. The headphones were back on and he was muttering along to Metallica's _Sad But True_, bending the wire into a vaguely hooked shape. Seto followed Yami over reluctantly, also wanting to know what their resident kleptomaniac was doing following them around.

"I am _talking_ to you, tomb robber!" Yami growled, not liking being ignored. Bakura flipped his headphones down again and turned to face the now ex-lovers, raising an eyebrow in question.

"I know, hence the headphones." Bakura smirked. "What do you _want_?" He asked, not interested in their little drama now that he had a piece of wire to occupy his attention.

"What are you doing here?" Seto demanded, standing back with his arms folded.

"Trying to get into this food place at the moment," the thief said, chewing on the bit of wire to try and get it into the shape he wanted.

"Why are you following us, thief?" Yami hissed, attempting to look threatening. Bakura snorted with laughter, not in the slightest bit worried.

"I wasn't, I happened upon your hissy fit completely by accident. Although if I hadn't been wearing my headphones I'm sure I could have heard you from the other side of the city. Is he that loud in bed?" Bakura asked, directing the question at Seto. The CEO just glared at him, which he was expecting anyway. "I'll take that as a yes. Poor Mokuba."

"How _dare-!"_ Yami began, taking a step towards Bakura, intent on doing some serious harm. Bakura had time to wonder how long it would take him to gut the pharaoh with a small bit of wire before the lights in the mall shut off and everything went silent.

"They had better not have locked us in." Seto said, not amused. However, the lights flickered back on a moment later and Bakura frowned, ignoring Yami, who was growling various threats at him.

"Can you feel that?" The thief asked, slipping the bit of wire into his pocket and standing very still, suddenly serious.

"What?" Seto asked, stumbling back before Bakura could answer. Yami stopped ranting as well, gasping in surprise when a tremor ran through the floor. All around the dome-shaped center they were in shop windows began to shatter, metal shutters clattering and the water in the fountain sloshing onto the floor.

"What is it!?" Yami cried, holding onto the marble side of the fountain to keep his footing.

"Earthquake," Seto growled, steadying himself on one of the columns that supported the domed ceiling.

"We need to get out of here," Bakura said urgently, looking up at the roof. Seto and Yami followed his gaze as the tremors increased only to see cracks spiderwebbing out across the plaster above them. "Which way?" He asked, looking around at the three entrances to the food court as he struggled to keep his footing.

"Over there!" Yami pointed at one of the rows of shops which led out of the mall. He let go of the fountain side as a crack appeared in the bottom of it and the water drained out, stumbling unsteadily towards the exit.

Seto followed closely behind with Bakura, who dodged falling plaster and concrete, never having been through an earthquake before.

"Wait!" The thief said, grabbing Seto's arm and yanking him to a halt just as a large section of the roof collapsed right where he'd been about to step. The plaster that rained down punched right through into the empty basement parking lot and the resulting hole in the floor cut off their escape route. Yami stood on the other side, stopping when he saw that Seto (and Bakura, but he didn't matter so much) was stranded in the center of the mall, being pushed back towards the fountain by the widening hole in the floor.

"Go!" Seto snarled at Yami, annoyed that the pharaoh had stopped. Yami nodded and ran off, heading towards the exit as the shaking in the floor reached fever pitch. Bakura lost his footing and fell to his knees, diving to the side quickly when a cinder block crashed through where he'd been. He tried to pull himself up using the side of the fountain, which Seto was also holding onto for support, and looked around for an alternative escape route. Seeing none, he looked down at the gaping edge of the hole, only blackness and a long drop waiting in that direction, and it was getting closer as more and more of the floor gave way. Looking up, he saw the last huge crack spread across the ceiling, signaling that in a few seconds the entire thing was going to rain down on top of them and send them through into the darkness below – if they even survived. He wasn't usually a very selfless person unless it involved Ryou, but it suddenly occurred to him that Seto Kaiba was mortal. Properly mortal, the die-and-stay-dead type. Even though he hated Yami with a passion, he had nothing in particular against Seto Kaiba, he even liked him on occasion because nobody could piss the pharaoh off quite the way he could. If he let Seto Kaiba die, he was never going to hear the end of it from Ryou and the others. So, as the ceiling gave way in huge chunks, Bakura dived on Seto and knocked him out of the way of a jagged section of concrete. Unfortunately, they landed with Bakura on top of Seto, who had time to look up in surprise at what the thief was doing before the last of the roof fell in and landed on Bakura's back, punching them both through into the basement and darkness.

XxXxX

Seto awoke to a weight on his chest. The weight turned out to be Bakura, who he instinctively pushed off before sitting up. The thief made no attempt to retaliate, he just curled up on his side and tried not to move.

Looking around, Seto surveyed the small section of the basement parking lot they'd fallen into by the light coming from the front end of a station wagon, it's headlights still on and its roof flattened by the weight of all the rubble laying on top of it. The detritus from the mall lay around them, chunks of plaster and concrete trapping them in a small space against one of the basement walls, the floor littered with glass and bricks, which Bakura was laying on. Noticing that the thief didn't seem to be moving, Seto turned and shook his shoulder, suddenly recalling why his only injuries seemed to be a few cuts and scrapes. Bakura had knocked him out of the way before the roof had collapsed on top of him, he could remember the look in the thief's eyes the instant before the weight of all that concrete had hit him. Determined.

Shaking Bakura's shoulder resulted in a ragged scream from the tomb robber, which was not what Seto had been expecting. He gingerly tuned the pale figure onto his back and watched a pair of pained red eyes open slowly, mustering the best glare they could under the circumstances.

"..." The thief began, before coughing and trying again. "Don't touch my shoulder." He finally managed. "Unless you feel like popping it back into place."

"It's dislocated?" Seto asked, running his eyes over the shaking figure laying before him. "Do you have any other injuries?"

"Yes." Bakura said simply, finding it hard to talk with his teeth clenched tightly against the pain. "Shoulder first." He hissed, allowing Seto to very painfully help him to sit up, his back against the wall.

"This is going to hurt." Seto said, closing his hand over Bakura's very bruised shoulder.

"It already bloody hurts, get on with it." The thief gasped, shrieking with pain when Seto slammed his shoulder hard, forcing the joint back into the socket. It wasn't the most painful thing he'd ever experienced, but it was definitely in his top five.

A few minutes later after Bakura had stopped alternately sobbing and swearing and threatening to murder everyone he'd ever met, Seto asked again about other injuries. Bakura got his harsh breathing under control and sat up a little straighter, biting back yet another stream of curses.

"You might want to look away." He warned, before turning his leg sideways a little. The wire he'd had in his pocket was now sticking out of his thigh very gorily, twisted and bloody. Seto watched in equal parts admiration and disgust as Bakura steeled himself before yanking it out, slamming his fist into the wall and biting his tongue because that also really, really hurt.

"Fucking...AARGH!" The thief snarled, unable to think of anything else that really summed up the amount of pain he was in.

"Is that everything?" Seto asked, quite impressed.

"Everything I can do something about right now," Bakura said, his voice strained. "My leg is fucked in about fifty places, my back is bruised to shit and there's blood running into my eyes from somewhere." The thief hissed.

"Here," Seto took out a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the blood from Bakura's forehead, inspecting the gash above his left eyebrow. "Thank you."

Bakura laughed painfully, never having heard Seto say that before.

"You're fucking welcome." He replied, "I was never going to hear the end of it if I let you get flattened, you're one of the people we like."

"What?" Seto asked in confusion, sitting next to Bakura to recover for a moment and take in the gravity of their situation before attempting to find a way out.

"Pharaoh has that gang of morons he hangs around with, we get everyone else. Well, everyone who isn't a total fucking idiot. Malik, Marik, Otogi... They all ended up with us – Ryou and I. Marik's decided we look after anyone who isn't one of the friendship crew. You're included, Mokuba decided it was better not to tell you." Bakura explained, his voice huskier than usual with pain.

"Mokuba?" Seto sounded surprised, having no idea that Bakura and his gang ever had any contact with his brother.

"You didn't think he just hung out with Yugi and the pharaoh lovers all the time, did you? Kid's gonna be a rockstar, he's pretty good. Uses our basement to practice. Otogi's gonna play bass for him, Marik helps out on the drums and Malik wants to be their stylist. Better than playing cards with the morons." Bakura laughed lightly, holding Seto's handkerchief to his forehead to try and stop the bleeding.

"I... had no idea." Seto said, stunned.

"Yeah, well you can come watch them sometime, it's not like our house isn't already filled with nutters. You know, you'd think the shoulder thing would hurt more, but actually I think it was the wire. I have to tell Marik about that, it was pretty cool." The tomb robber said, managing a fanged grin.

"I wonder if Yami made it out." Seto said, scanning the rubble for any places they might be able to get out.

"Yeah, perish the thought of something heavy flattening lover-boy." Bakura sneered, picking at the rather gory wound on his leg. The shadow magic coursing through him was working overtime to try and heal everything, but it was going to be a while before he could even get up.

"He could at least bring help, if he doesn't get distracted." Seto muttered, drawing another laugh from the wounded thief.

"You haven't got much faith in your lover, have you?" The tomb robber grinned, bringing the bloody handkerchief away from the slowly closing wound on his forehead and pressing it over the one on his leg, instead.

"Ex-lover." Seto growled. "I expect he'll point someone in our direction, unless he's feeling particularly vindictive."

"Lucky you, he'd just leave me here to rot. Then again, I'd do the same to him so I suppose I'm lucky to have you here. Ra, I'm fucking hungry." Bakura remarked, leaning back against the wall and arching a little, trying to get comfortable. His back and shoulder throbbed but his forehead was healed now and the shadow power was going to work knitting the bones in his broken leg back together.

"What do ancient tomb robbers eat?" Seto asked, half-serious and half smirking.

"Pizza, hot dogs, cheeseburgers. Why, what do Seto Kaibas eat?" Bakura replied, grinning. "Are you afraid of horribly mutilated corpses?" The thief asked suddenly, turning to look at the car that was providing their only source of light.

"Not particularly." Seto shrugged.

"Good, have a look in that car and see if there's anything to eat, it might take my mind off the fact that my leg is healing and it feels really weird."

"It's healing already?" Seto asked, standing up, ignoring his many aching bruises and picking his way carefully over to where the front half of the car stuck out through the wall of rubble.

"I'm special. Give it an hour and I'll be mostly intact, unless I haven't got enough power to heal all this. Then I'm fucked. At the moment I prefer to be optimistic. Food?" Bakura said in his unnervingly flippant way, watching Seto try the passenger side door. Since the roof had buckled it wouldn't open, but the windscreen and all the windows were smashed so he peered into the darkness inside the car.

"I found one of the security guards." The CEO mentioned casually. "Well, most of him. Part of his head is missing and I think one of his arms is gone, I can't really see from here."

Bakura smirked where he sat, enjoying the fact that Seto didn't seem to give a damn about the horror movie scene in front of him.

"Sounds delicious. Check the glove box." He advised. Seto reached in through the open window and clicked open the glove compartment, pulling out everything inside.

"Maps, receipts, birthday card, car manual, chocolate bar." Seto said, picking up the chocolate and leaving the rest. Then he paused, noticing the metal lunch box under the passenger seat. Reaching down as far as he could without brushing his arm over the broken glass sticking out of the window seals, he grabbed the box and headed back over to sit next to Bakura.

"You know, Japanese chocolate is alright. Not as good as British chocolate, but I have to commend your country's effort." Bakura mentioned, taking the chocolate bar, snapping it in half and handing the rest back to Seto, who was investigating the lunch box. It appeared to be locked.

"Who locks their lunch box?" Seto muttered in disbelief, raising an eyebrow at the thing. Bakura, declining to comment because he had a mouth full of chocolate, took the box and set it on his lap carefully, so as not to jar his healing leg. Seto watched, eating his own half of the bar slowly as Bakura picked up the bloody bit of wire he'd removed from his leg and wiped most of the gore off with the handkerchief, which was pretty much drenched in blood anyway. Once it was relatively clean, he stuck it in the lock on the front of the lunch box, turned it a couple of times and watched the lid spring open easily.

"I knew this wire was going to come in handy for something other than impaling myself on." He said, slipping it back in his pocket and peering inside the box of treasures.

"Sandwiches," Seto said, picking up the little plastic bag with four uneaten sandwiches in. "An apple, a banana," he picked up the fruit – slightly bruised but otherwise edible, "a yogurt and some kind of cereal bar thing."

"Dibs on the banana. What's in those sandwiches?" Bakura asked, as though they were on a picnic. Right about now, Seto mused, Yami would have been either angsting or panicking. Opening the plastic bag, he peeled the corner of one of the sandwiches up to have a look what was in it.

"Peanut butter and... something. I suppose it's jelly." He put the sandwiches back in their bag for later.

"It's bloody jam, not jelly. Jelly is that horrible congealed stuff Malik eats." Bakura made a face at the sandwiches, which Seto placed back in the lunch box with the rest of the deceased guard's dinner. "Peanut butter is an abomination. And Jam is meant for sex, not putting on bread." The thief announced, twitching slightly because his bones were almost done mending and his leg ached from being kept still for so long.

"What about yogurt?" Seto asked, amused by Bakura's odd opinions on food. It felt very strange to be having a conversation with someone who wasn't annoyingly sane.

"I approve of dairy products. Do you know how many puss and mucus cells are in every drop of milk? Anything that disgusting is worth eating. I like meat better, I'm very big on cruelty to animals." The thief said, having a go at bending his leg. "Ow! Ow, ok, not done yet."

"So the more disgusting something is, the more likely you are to eat it?" Seto raised an eyebrow, reading the ingredients on the back of the cereal bar. Bakura leant back against the wall and thought about this.

"Within reason, yes. Well, the more it's likely to make Ryou sick, the more inclined I am to eat it. Marik once collected all the slugs from the garden, put them in the oven on a baking tray and made sweets." The tomb robber recalled, watching the wound on his thigh, which was now almost closed, as the last bits of skin knitted themselves back together. It'd made quite a nice rip in his jeans and soaked the material around it with blood, which looked nice in his opinion. "They were a bit like wine gums. Ryou spent about an hour locked in the bathroom throwing up and crying. He didn't even eat one and he can't have wine gums in the house now."

Seto smirked, tossing the cereal bar back into the lunch box and placing it against the wall for later. The chocolate seemed to have sated Bakura's hunger for now, so they could save the rest for when they were next hungry. Provided someone didn't dig them out first.

"Alright, leg is useable." Bakura said, bending his leg again tentatively and finding that it was one place on his body that no longer hurt. Well... much. The shadow magic was going to work repairing the damaged tissue in his shoulder now but it was slowing down, running out of juice. As long as it got his shoulder in working order he didn't care – he could heal the bruises like a mortal. They were annoying, but not as painful as his other injuries had been.

"That healing thing must come in handy." Seto said, looking at the now smooth, pale skin on Bakura's thigh where the wire-wound had been.

"Yeah, Shadow Magic. Don't leave home without it." The thief grinned. "I'm almost out now though, just fixing my shoulder up and the rest can wait. I'm going to have _such_ a headache in the morning." He said, regardless of the fact he had no idea what time of day it was. Sometime around midnight, he suspected. It had been almost ten when they'd fallen, and he didn't think he'd been unconscious for more than an hour.

"Do you think we can dig out of here?" Seto wondered aloud, once again surveying their little prison.

"You never know." Bakura shrugged, instantly regretting it with a hiss because of his shoulder. "Ow. Don't let me do that again." He said, then stretched out his leg and rolled his ankle, making the joint pop loudly. "Normally I'd figure out some way to use the Ring to get us out, but I used all my evil powers healing. Don't they have fire engines and people to dig survivors out in situations like these?"

"Yes, but I assume this was quite a large earthquake and the emergency services are going to concentrate on places there were likely to have been a lot of people, not a mall at closing time. They'll get here eventually, I suppose." Seto explained.

"Well, that can't be too thick," Bakura pointed to above them, where large slabs of the roof and twisted metal girders had formed the ceiling of their little hole. "But digging straight up is usually difficult and tends to involve being flattened by big chunks of rock. Having been through that once today I'm not inclined to have another go just yet." He grimaced. "The wall behind us is solid and I forgot to bring my sledgehammer. That lot doesn't look too promising either," he gestured towards the car and the slabs of concrete surrounding it. "I suppose digging over there might work." He pointed to the opposite side from the car, at the wall of smaller bits of debris that the headlights were shining on.

"How long until your shoulder is healed?" Seto asked, wondering how much longer the headlights were going to stay on before the battery died. Digging through the wreckage in pitch darkness didn't sound too appealing.

"It's good enough now, let's get started. I have a good feeling about that direction." Bakura pulled himself up with a groan at the all-encompassing ache that covered most of his back, limping slightly towards the far wall because the shadow magic had healed his broken bones but not the bruising. Seto followed and they began moving chunks of brick and plaster from the wall, keeping a careful watch in case any of the makeshift ceiling decided to cave in on them. The fact that Bakura insisted on singing _Land Down Under_ while he cheerfully scrambled about in the dust and debris made Seto almost laugh out loud. He supposed _Men At Work_ made sense.

"Are you always this..." Seto trailed off, not entirely sure what the word was. 'Amusing' would probably cover it.

"Annoying? Mad? Sexy? Bruised? Dusty? Covered in blood?" Bakura said, punctuating each word by tossing bits of the wall over his shoulder. "Yes, yes, definitely, no, no, yes." He replied to himself.

"Yami insists on telling me you're dangerous." Seto remarked, yanking out a bit of twisted metal from the debris wall and adding it to the pile they'd removed.

"I'm only dangerous to Yami," Bakura grinned. "And his friends, clowns, mimes, children, pets, old people and generally anyone I find myself disliking." He said, yelping as he leant on a rock and it gave under his weight, sending his arm through into whatever space was on the other side. Seto took his free hand and helped him up, quite surprised that Bakura actually accepted his aid.

"That looks inviting." Seto commented, staring at the pitch black hole that was being lit up by the occasional spark of some broken cable.

Peering through the hole, Bakura dug out a few more rocks to widen it, the throbbing in his back getting worse by the moment. He hissed as he jarred his still healing shoulder the wrong way but stopped when something on the other side of the gap caught his eye.

"That big metal shutter looks suspiciously like part of the food court thing. We may not have to resort to eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches yet." The thief said, Seto helping him get the gap wide enough to fit through. While Bakura climbed through with slightly less grace than usual because the bruises were making his limbs seize up in pain every now and then, Seto went back for the metal lunch box and then followed.

Once they were both through Seto stepped out of the way of the hole to allow the headlights of the car to shine through, illuminating the new area they found themselves in. It looked much like the first, only one wall was a metal shutter that Bakura had been trying to break into earlier in the food court. Another wall held chunks of marble from the fountain, water running down it and dribbling off the end of one of the rocks onto the floor. Loose cables sparked and flickered to one side, and Seto stared at the spreading pool of water on the floor, calculating how long it was going to take for it to get around all the dust and wreckage to where the electric cables were spitting angrily.

As he turned back to mention the new problem of the conductivity of water to Bakura, he was surprised to see the thief on his knees, looking a little paler than usual.

"What are you doing?" Seto asked, helping Bakura stand up again with considerable effort.

"Not collapsing like a woman at all." Bakura lied, leaning against the stability of Seto for a moment before managing to stand on his own again. "I may be slightly more damaged than I thought."

"Can you get into that?" Seto asked, leading the ailing thief over to the metal shutter of the snack stall as the water slowly spread towards the cables.

"I can get into anything." Bakura claimed, trying not to sound as exhausted as he suddenly felt. Digging out the wire from his pocket again, he gladly knelt down next to the lock and began to work his magic, while Seto watched the water.

"The lock's damaged," the tomb robber muttered, having a little more difficulty with this one than he had the lunch box.

"You may want to hurry up, unless you like the idea of being electrocuted." Seto warned, the water about a foot away from the cables now. He hoped there was something on the other side of the shutter, or they were going to have to hope they could balance on a couple of half bricks until they were rescued or the power went out.

"I hear it's an experience, but I've had enough of those today." Bakura muttered, pulling himself up as the lock clicked open and helping Seto roll the shutter up. Inside was the food stall, thankfully relatively intact. They climbed inside and sat on the wooden counter, watching in interest as the water reached the cables and the entire floor lit up with sparks for a moment. It died down to a few slivers of lightening jumping across the water now and then, effectively cutting off their way back towards the car. Seto turned back to Bakura again when he felt the thief suddenly lean on him only to find Bakura had passed out. Worried for the tomb robber despite himself, Seto moved off the counter into the inside of the stall, laying Bakura down on the wooden counter and draping his ever-present white trench coat over the sleeping yami. That coat was never going to be the same, he mused as he looked at all the damage it had taken. His eyes moved up to Bakura's face and he found himself staring at the slightly cut up but still very good-looking maniac laid before him. It occurred to him that he was single now and he smirked wickedly, deciding to do something about that when Bakura wasn't unconscious.

Turning around when he could finally tear his eyes from the white-haired menace sleeping peacefully on the counter, Seto set about digging around for some real food and something to drink for when the injured yami woke up.

XxXxX

Bakura opened his eyes groggily and moaned, the headache he'd been fully expecting hitting him like a sledgehammer. He sat up, regretting it because it hurt but not enough to lay back down again, and looked down at Seto, who was sitting on the single chair inside the stall.

"Welcome back." The CEO said, handing Bakura a can of cola and a couple of plastic-wrapped rice balls.

"I couldn't stay away," Bakura replied, attempting to ignore his blinding headache in favour of the prospect of food that wasn't peanut butter and jam-related.

"Watch out when you open the can," Seto advised, having found out himself that soda and earthquakes generally produces a fizzy mess. Bakura took his advice and opened the can carefully, noticing that Seto's coat was draped over him like a blanket.

"How long was I asleep?" The thief asked, making a total mess of unwrapping his onigiri and getting it everywhere.

"A few hours," Seto replied. "Your back looks like a giant bruise covered in other bruises."

Bakura paused with a mouthful of rice, swallowed it and then raised a white eyebrow in question.

"You looked at my back?" He asked, wishing he'd been awake at the time.

"I was bored." The brunette claimed, making Bakura wonder if he'd looked at anything else while he'd been bored. Not that he minded, or anything.

"It aches, but I'm sure I'll live. In a manner of speaking." The ancient Egyptian decided, looking at the back wall of their little shelter. "How thick does that look to you?" He asked, gesturing to the wooden wall.

"Not thick enough to be in the way for very long." Seto predicted, moving the chair he'd been sitting on out of the way. That done, he kicked the back wall, hard, with one heavy boot. It splintered and he drew back, kicking it a couple more times until they had a hole big enough to get through. The other side was lit by a fire, flickering against the walls of a much larger room that contained something neither of them were particularly glad to see.

"I thought I heard voices," Yami said, standing up from where he'd been sat next to the fire as Seto made his way through the gap he'd kicked in the wall, turning to help Bakura – still wearing Seto's coat like a cape – through after him. Jealousy reared it's ugly head in Yami's eyes and Bakura grinned, now thoroughly enjoying the fact that he was injured because he was determined that Seto was going to be his now. He was far too much fun to leave with the Pharaoh.

"We bought you sandwiches," the thief said, opening the lunch box Seto had been carrying and tossing the plastic bag at Yami.

TBC

This should only be two parts, and the next bit will be out soon-ish. Again, thank-you's to Sandman (I don't know what else to call you) for giving me a reason to get off my arse and write something.

One final thing... Anyone interested in Yugioh, One Piece, Final Fantasy 7/Advent Children and Saiyuki, I'm selling off my huge Doujinshi collection over the next couple of weeks. There's Ultimate Powers, Meiji Chimera and a bunch of others. They'll all be up for sale on that big auction site that I'm sure FFN/AFFN won't let me write here. Starts with 'E' and ends in 'Bay', anyway. The username is FarEastofEden, so take a look if you're bored.


	2. Chapter 2

Notes: This fic is still dedicated to Sandman Bubblefish. Hope you enjoy it!

Slither 2

"So, how did sex work for you two, anyway?" Bakura asked casually as the three of them sat around the small campfire, now burning splintered wood from the side of the food stall.

"Work?" Seto asked, not entirely sure what Bakura was getting at. Yami just attempted to ignore the entire conversation and concentrated on trying to get Yugi to open his end of the link and come rescue him from being stuck in a cave with Bakura. The problem with that was that Yugi had the same philosophy towards his end of the link that he had towards his email inbox and the mail – no news is good news. It was always going to be either someone wanting money or someone wanting rescuing. It often made Yami want to threaten his tiny hikari into keeping his end of the link open, but he was the pharaoh and threatening children was unbecoming of royalty. He was slightly envious of Bakura's unstable group of friends, who used their links for everything from 'I'm going down the shops, do you want anything?' to 'Malik is walking around naked again, stay out of the hallway for the next ten minutes.' Bakura could probably get in touch with Ryou easily, but Yami decided he'd have to be a lot more desperate before he asked the tomb robber for help.

"How did sex work for you? Were stepladders involved?" Bakura was asking, sucking on a lollipop he'd pilfered from the snack stand. It was steadily turning his tongue blue, but he didn't seem to mind.

"We did have a slight problem with the height difference," Seto murmured, thinking about it. Yami flushed and glared at them both.

"I cannot believe you're discussing our sex life with this ingrate." The pharaoh hissed at Seto, who shrugged nonchalantly.

"Former sex life," Bakura reminded with a malicious grin. "Alright, tell me something honestly, Pharaoh." The thief said, looking seriously over at the game king. "Do you ever call Yugi 'Mini-Me'?"

Yami would have leapt across the fire and attempted to throttle the smirking thief if he hadn't been so surprised to hear Seto actually snickering.

"I'm glad you find this so _amusing_, Seto." The pharaoh growled coldly.

"You know, your shadow looks like a bonsai palm tree. Do they make those?" Bakura asked, directing the question at Seto, who shrugged.

"Probably." The CEO replied, quite enjoying watching Yami get angrier and angrier.

"You should be kept in a cage, tomb robber." Yami muttered darkly, unwrapping the peanut butter and jam sandwiches to take his mind off how much he wanted to kill Bakura. The problem was, he always came back.

"Kinky." The thief purred, grinning. "Ok, experiment, because I need something to take my mind off both the _throbbing_ in my back and the fact that you're going to actually eat those blasphemous sandwiches." Bakura decided. "Concentrate really hard on the power of friendship and the heart of the cards and whatever other hippie rubbish you believe in, and let's see if your friends magically turn up and dig us out."

Yami scowled through a bite of his sandwich, not enjoying the fact that his enemy was amusing _his_ ex-boyfriend at _his_ expense.

"Fine, I will. You'll be sorry you doubted the power of friendship when-" Yami began, cut off when Bakura pointed behind him with a shocked look on his face.

"I don't believe it, it actually worked," The thief gasped dramatically.

"Really?" Yami turned, growling when Seto actually _laughed_. Turning back, he glared murderously at the slightly demented thief who was now licking his lollipop like a cat with a matching wicked feline smile on his face.

"My mistake. I must be delirious, perhaps I'm allergic to you." Bakura said in his accented purr.

"One day, tomb robber-" Yami growled.

"You'll grow taller?" Bakura popped the lollipop back in his mouth and grinned around the stick.

"If this were Egypt I'd have you flogged, thief." Yami threatened. Seto was watching the sniping with interest, sitting back casually against a large, mostly vertical piece of the wall.

"Promises, promises..." Bakura purred again, sucking on the lollipop in the most perverted way Yami had ever seen anyone do anything. Seto's eyes were fixed on the pale lips of the thief, whose demonic eyes were sparkling from the flickering light of the fire. "Have you ever been flogged, Pharaoh?" The Ring spirit asked. "It's magical, you should try it. There's nothing quite like feeling that sharp crack of pain across your back, tied up waiting for the next blow with the blood running down your skin..." The thief licked his lips. "Makes me miss the old days."

"I always knew you were a masochist." The pharaoh commented in a distasteful voice, noticing that Seto's eyes had glazed over slightly. Damn that thief.

"You don't like it rough, Pharaoh?" Bakura smirked, turning and raising an eyebrow at Seto, who shrugged.

"Certainly not, you perverted deviant." Yami scowled, making Bakura laugh.

"That has to be the best thing I've been called all day. What about you, Seto?"

Seto decided he very much enjoyed the way Bakura said his name in that slightly husky voice, and annoying Yami was quite amusing too.

"That's for me to know," The CEO said smoothly, "and for you to find out."

Bakura was about to reply that he would very much like to take Seto up on that offer right there and then, but Yami stood up and threw some more wood viciously into the fire, looking about as pissed off as Bakura had ever seen him.

"We're trapped underground with no way out and that was the last of the firewood. My friends will come and rescue us, but I don't want to spend however many hours I'm stuck here listening to you two flirting!" The pharaoh snarled, not phasing either of his companions in the slightest.

"You're too short to be threatening, give it up." Bakura advised. "Your friends are too stupid to find us, they have the collective IQ of a hairdryer. I already told Ryou to use the Ring to find us anyway, he'll be here with the others as soon as they dig Otogi and Malik out from the Black Crown."

"Do not call my friends stupid, thief! At least none of _my_ friends drink bleach!" Yami hissed.

"Your friends drink bleach?" Seto questioned, watching Bakura finish his lollipop and toss the stick casually into the fire.

"_Marik_ drinks bleach. And only when Ryou fails to buy enough alcohol to sustain him. The rest of the time he sits in our living room, drinks fire water and eats rusks." Bakura explained. "On the plus side, if they put sugar in his vodka again he'll have us dug out of here in no time. And you wondered why his grin kept sliding off his face on the Battleship."

"You call _my_ friends idiots? What about the pack of freaks _he_ hangs around with?" Yami accused. Seto shrugged once again, which was becoming a habit.

"They're more interesting than your cheerleaders. At least they have individual brains instead of hive mentality." Seto said.

"I love it when you use big words." Bakura commented, fangs glinting in the firelight.

"I'll have you know, my friends -" Yami began, cut off by a snort from Bakura.

"Are inferior to my friends. Now shut up about friends, dwarf." The thief leant back, closing his eyes for a few moments. "My back is throbbing." He mentioned, enjoying saying the word 'throbbing'.

"At least I don't look like an 80's hair metal throwback." Yami sneered, completely unaware that Bakura actually took that as a compliment.

"No, you look like either a really bad acid trip or a rainbow exploding on top of a midget." Bakura replied easily, arching up with a slightly obscene groan. "I'm going to ache so much tomorrow."

"Come here," Seto said, allowing Bakura to gladly scoot over and lean with his head on the CEO's lap, both of them smirking evilly at Yami. Seto's long fingers set to work gently massaging the half-healed bruises all over Bakura's back, and the thief moaned happily.

"My hero..." He groaned, discreetly watching the pharaoh glare into the fire like he wanted to kill everything he'd ever seen.

"Don't mention it, I'm sure you can pay me back later." The brunette said, running his fingers down Bakura's spine and trying not to be too turned on by the way the thief arched at the touch.

"They should make suicide capsules for situations like these." Yami muttered bitterly, poking at the fire with a bit of metal.

TBC

I realize how short this is, and that it was only supposed to have two chapters. I decided to split the last chapter in two and post what I have here so far, because things are going to be very hectic for the next few weeks and I have precious little time to write when I'm not totally knackered. I'll start on the next bit when I have my next spare hour or two.


End file.
